*EDIT*
my website is back up and running!!!
====================================

Hi. I just graduated from college. I am really looking for some good critiques about my demo reel, because this is the best work I have done so far, so these reels are pretty much make or break for me...for now. I want to get an job in animation more than anything, and I am constantly working to get better at it. Be as harsh as you can be. In fact, make me cry! Whether it's the quality of my work, the editing of my reel, the length of it, the download, the music, anything. Anything will be helpful, thank you very much.

If you're having trouble viewing it, right click on these links and choose save target as:
http://www.shatteredmotion.com/hopper_portfoliosite/images/demo_hopper_anim_webhi.mov (http://www.shatteredmotion.com/hopper_portfoliosite/images/demo_hopper_anim_webhi.mov)

If you're having trouble viewing it, right click on these links and choose save target as:
http://www.shatteredmotion.com/hopper_portfoliosite/images/demo_models_webhi.mov (http://www.shatteredmotion.com/hopper_portfoliosite/images/demo_models_webhi.mov)

It's a bit dark, that is my first impression. Either you are trying to hide the emptiness in most of the scenes or it's just very underexposed. I would be as schematic as you have been in this reel (good!) but I would have made the backgrounds much lighter or preferably white so you can see what is going on. This kind of darkness doesn't provide atmosphere, if that is what you were doing it for.

I'll leave it to the next speaker now. It's also a bit lenghty. That was the exact same comment I got on my first reel I posted a couple of days ago so I'm not at all claiming that I know how it should be done but it attracts the attention, or merely doesn't after a while.

But hey, the very first thought was that for someone just starting in this business I've seen a lot lot worse. I think within a year or two you will blow them all away. I can see you have a lot of talent.

hopper2k

01-20-2005, 12:03 AM

hey, thanks alot for the comments. yeah, i see what you mean about it being too dark. right now, off the top of my head, i already know the dunk, moonsault, murder scene, and composites have dark backgrounds. and viewing it at 320x240 doesn't help that out either. i'll lighten those up and definetely shorten it too. i'll look at cutting it to under 2 min. (or should i go under 1:30 or under 1 min??) I'll get to this sometime next week after a little project I'm working on right now, and post an update once it's all done.

I was thinking no one was going to post a comment. Thanks again.

hopper2k

01-31-2005, 07:07 PM

Ok, the animation reel has been updated. It seems like I've been rendering and re-rending non-stop for the past week. I changed some backgrounds so the scenes won't seem too dark, I added some new clips, took out some old ones, and the lenght of it is now a little under 2 min.

Now that I have a little bit of free time, I want to start doing some more character acting and dialogue animations to add to my reel, as that is the thing I have the least experience in. So I shall be diving into this month's 10 second club.

Any comments about this reel will be useful. Animation, preferably character animation, is what I want to do, so this is pretty much what I have to break me in for now. Now gimmie your harshest critique!

seger

01-31-2005, 07:41 PM

You're a much better character animator than I am but I think you still have to learn a bit. Nevertheless, I think it's much more fruity this way. It's not so gloomy anymore. I am wondering though why you don't put your characters into Nurbs. Some of them look a bit edgy. Or is that a professional way of going about. It just could be. Also some of the movement is a bit on the jerky side (or perhaps just not so much animated in the "classical" way of doing it, with movement being introduced by anti-movement.) I think the reel as a whole has a very nice snappy feel to it. I think the music is a bit shallow but does keep the whole thing upright and moving. (I think that music answers at least half of the remaining questions a client might have after seeing a film)
It's a lot better than it was! Length is just right. :buttrock:

hopper2k

01-31-2005, 08:04 PM

Thanks once again seger. I do have tons more to learn regarding animation (well, I have a lot to learn about EVERYTHING!) and I am still striving to get better. Everything on my reels are either animations I learned and did in school or did on my own time to try and get better (the dunk and karate chop guys). I am going to start working on some smaller animations regarding character acting so I can get better at that as well.

I know I probably needed some re-workings on some of those animations, but I felt that it would have just taken too much time for me to fix, and I'd much rather start something new with the knowledge I have now, and leave that older stuff in the past, and to also show a progression for myself. But hopefully this reel will be good enough to get me something small for now, as I'll always be working on some new stuff in my free time to get better and keep adding to my reel. For all my animations, I honestly didn't take any consideration into the way I posed my characters, staging, and sillouhettes. That is one thing that someone mentioned to me in another forum. I have been reading more and more about character acting lately, and I can't believe I was never told any of this or learned anything about it while doing it for school. Shame on me. Thank goodness I know it now.

I primarily build my characters with polygons, it's much easier and faster for me that way. As far as the characters looking "edgy", if you were referring to the little boy and girl characters, they are slightly low poly which was a stylistic choice for the director of that project and was modeled by someone else (I was in charge of animation for that one). But everything else, even on the modeling reel, was modeled by me.

Thanks!

looneyone

02-03-2005, 12:51 AM

love your anime.and i was wondering can you help me out because i want to an animator.hit me b@ck at lny_n 2yahoo.com

hopper2k

02-03-2005, 04:12 AM

looneyone, how were you able to view it? my site is has been down for the last couple of days. unless you have psychic powers or something (which would rock).

CGTalk Moderation

02-03-2006, 05:00 AM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.